


worse things have happened to me

by Audity



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, M/M, This isn't a happy fic, break ups
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-29
Updated: 2014-09-29
Packaged: 2018-02-19 05:15:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2376041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Audity/pseuds/Audity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Enjolras, it's fine. I understand," Grantaire said, but Enjolras couldn't help but feel the way the steady tone in his boyfriend's voice was forced, and he fought off the stale feeling at the back of his throat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	worse things have happened to me

Grantaire clenched his fists by his side, his foot tapping up and down quickly as if to an invisible beat in his head, though his face remained calm.

"Enjolras, it's fine. I understand," Grantaire said, but Enjolras couldn't help but feel the way the steady tone in his (former) boyfriend's voice was forced, and he fought off the stale feeling at the back of his throat. "Not like it's the first time I've fucked up, and then been fucked over by it." And, Enjolras had heard a lot of unpleasant sounds in his life, but the laugh that Grantaire barked out was at the top of the list.

"I--" Enjolras swallowed, his mouth dry, "I really am sorry. But we both know this isn't working anymore. This is the first conversation in weeks, nearly months, that hasn't been a fight, and it's about us breaking up." Licking his lips, and then glancing at his feet when Grantaire looked at him, Enjolras shrugged.

Feet sliding across the carpet, Grantaire reached out with little hesitation and wrapped his hands around Enjolras's biceps. "I never said it wasn't the right choice," he said earnestly, but there it was again, the forced steady tone that told Enjolras as soon as Grantaire walked out of the apartment he was going to run away, get drunk, and wake up in a ditch.

(And, if Enjolras wished he could be there to help him recover, he'd sort of forfeited that right now, hadn't he?)

Biting his lip, and not missing the way Grantaire looked at him and then looked away quickly, Enjolras dug his fingernails, jagged from biting at them, into his palm. "I don't know what else to say. But," he paused, and Grantaire stepped away, Enjolras missing the weight on his arms for a moment before refocusing, "answer me honestly. This is going to sound really fucking self centered, but, what exactly, could be worse than this," he gestured between the two of them, "ending? Don’t act oblivious, we both know that neither of us are. Grantaire, you were so emotionally reliant on this relationship.”

 _I still am_ , Grantaire thought quietly, _it ending doesn’t change that._

Taking a deep breath in and back out, Grantaire turned away from Enjolras. “I’m also emotionally reliant on a bottle, Apollo.” He turned around. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

Enjolras wasn’t going to lie to himself. That stung.

“Then I’m sorry I thought this relationship was something more than fighting and then having angry sex,” Enjolras spat, taking a step back. “I’m sorry I thought we had something that might be special. I’m sorry that I thought you had any ounce of caring left in you.”

“I did care, Enjolras. I always have cared. But with every fight, with every misplaced insult that you didn’t even think about before it rolled off your tongue, I cared just a little bit less. I poured all my caring into a bottle and sealed it up and threw it to the seas.” Grantaire had given up with the steady tone, and Enjolras realized that Grantaire had had his fists clenched to keep them from shaking. “So I’m sorry that you didn’t see how much I cared, but I guess that’s your loss, because I’m going to walk out that door, and I’m not going to look back because if you thought that I wasn’t invested in this relationship, if you thought that I ever stopped caring about _you_ , then we never should have started whatever the fuck this is in the first place.”

Then Grantaire turned and walked deliberately down the hallway towards the bedroom, and Enjolras stood quietly, looking dully at the half moons in the middle of his palm, startling when he heard Grantaire walk back down the hallway, a backpack over his shoulder. “I have a couple changes of clothes, and my art supplies,” he said, the forced tone back, but this time it was suppressing anger,  not sadness or remorse. “I’ll have one of my other friends come and pick up the rest of it for me.”

Numbly, Enjolras watched as his boyfriend of the past year and a half turned around and walked out the door, and it felt as if all the oxygen in the room was leaving with him, and if Enjolras didn’t feel like there were nails through his feet keeping him in place, he’d run after Grantaire, tell him he was sorry, this time not because the relationship ended, but because Enjolras was the one who fucked up, and Grantaire couldn’t have been more perfect.

But, as it was, Enjolras shuffled his feet over to the couch, and fell down, wondering if it would be possible to jump into the sea after Grantaire’s bottle of care, and save it, and bring Grantaire back with it.

Or maybe, the thought continued, Enjolras unbidding, he could just stay down there. Not think about what he’d done, all the little things over the past few months that would have been easy enough to change, and just float along, forever. There were worse things than drowning, Enjolras thought.

**Author's Note:**

> based off of Frank Turner's 'Worse Things Happen at Sea'
> 
> also this is juliet's fault
> 
> i'm audjolras on tumblr and @grawntaire on twitter and i love nice comments from all you lovely people who read the stuff that i post on here thank u very much


End file.
